DIGGING A GRAVE

DIGGING  A  GRAVE

Rumors about Davie P. had started to rise from when Carl V. reported (told) to have seen him , all busy digging in an uncultivated land which, even if he   wasn’t sure to whom it owned, certainly it didn’t belong to Davie.

 Carl had seen him digging in that land__ which had once been cultivated, but since years now nobody cared about it , in fact weeds and brambles grew there____during a walk in the countryside, and he had seen him when evening was coming. However , even though he had seen him from a some distance_____Carl was walking on the road , and the land where the other stayed, digging, was beyond the road_____he was sure he was not mistaken : the man who, in the evening, when it was almost dark, he had seen very busy to dig the ground with a spade, that man was undoubtedly Davie P.

He, Davie P., a fifty, lived alone in an old house, which had only the ground floor, one of the oldest house in that suburb, which he had inherited from his grandparents, who were buried in the cemetery of that suburb. Nobody knew anything about his parents, it was said that he had grown up with his grandparents, that  he had  never known his parents. Nobody even knew if he was single or divorced , although there were those who claimed he was a widower.

As for his features, his appearance, Davie P. was not one who stood out, but rather one who went unnoticed. He was neither tall nor short, neither fat nor thin, and he had such an anonymous face, to not say insignificant, that you had to look at it carefully to be able to remember it.

Even if there had been some curiosities about him , and even some gossip, as is to be expected to happen in claustrophobic places like that suburban place, until then Davie P.  had passed rather unnoticed among the people who lived in Ponzi, a fraction of the city Panci, which was a suburban area. No one had fixed their eyes on him, no one had targeted him……But then here that Carl V. had told of having seen him who was digging in that wasteland ,when it was almost evening. Carl V. had told to have seen him digging to his wife, and his sons , and even to his friends, to his acquaintances, too, so much to have seen Davie P. digging  had struck him, who had kept on wondering and on asking : but why Davie P. was digging in that ground, that evening? Carl V. had no doubts : that man he had seen digging in the uncultivated land, he was Davie P. He couldn’t even have doubts about what Davie P. was doing, since he had seen him sink the spade into the ground and pull away the ground he had moved , with a shovel.  He had even seen the heap of ground next to where Davie was digging.

It didn’t take long for people living in Ponzi, and we can say for all of them, to learn what Carl V. had told about Davie P., so that many people began to wonder and  to ask why Davie P. was digging in that desolate land, that evening. Some of them, joking , said that perhaps he was looking for a hidden treasure underground. However, many people of Ponzi began to look at Davie with a certain suspicion, with diffidence…..who knows what that man , with such a quiet and modest life, was really up to, who knows what business, maybe not quite clean, was involved in.

Davie P. had now become the most talked about among the people of Ponzi when, and it seems quite by chance, bones were found just on the desolate land where he had been seen digging by Carl V. At first it was said that most likely it was  the bones of some animal, but soon it was learned that they instead were pieces of bones from a human skeleton. Oh, how did they  end up on that vacant lot? All people living in Ponzi began to wonder, to ask. And who(m) did they belong to? Waiting for answers from the analyzes which would be made of those bones, it was inevitable that the rumors about Davie P. became more insistent, more insinuating.  Unsurprisingly people of Ponzi began to say that those bones, bones that belonged to a human skeleton, he, Davie P. must have brought them to that scrub land. And starting from this almost unanimous conviction,

other disturbing details were also told about Davie, even if it was not known how Ponzi’s people had come to learn these details. It was said that Davie, who was currently an accountant for various companies, mostly shoe factories in the area, before coming to settle in Ponzi, had worked in a funeral home in a great city, perhaps Rome. Here, it was said that he had lost that Job, that is, he had been fired by the funeral home because he was found scarring corpses.

Davie led an almost secluded life. He did his job as an accountant from home, he went every morning in the nearest bar to have breakfast, he did not hang out with anyone , he received only rare visits , he rarely went out at night. Yet the rumor began to circulate among people  that he used to go out at night, when he was sure no one saw him to come into cemeteries looking for bones. So they had decided to follow him in his nocturnal outings , eager to take him while he was desecrating graves. They took up position for several nights in a row near his house____they were hidden inside a van of a company which made various houses repairs, as the writing on the sides of the van said. But Davie had never gone out those nights, when they had been waiting from the evening after dinner until the sunrise. Yet, they said each other, he(Davie) must go out at night. They all were convinced that he would come out, that they would see him come out, sooner or later, since they really believed that Davie went to cemeteries at night to desecrate graves and to steal corpses. Ah, they couldn’t wait to catch him  with his hands in the bag, indeed in the grave. They kept on waiting , night after night, without losing hope: sooner or later he would come out ( he would have come out). But Davie continued not to go out , to spend his nights at home.

More than ten nights had passed and their special guard had never come out , when one night they had a surprise they really would never have imagined. Davie didn’t go out also that night , but

Instead he received visits.  Shortly before midnight, three people, who came walking, knocked at his house door. It was difficult, indeed impossible to understand if they were men or women, since, in addiction to wearing wide and long black tunics, they had a hood on their head, also black, which hid their faces.

They, hidden inside the van, stayed all night wondering who would be those very strange guests , entirely in black dressed, or rather hidden in black from head to toe ( foot)whom they had seen entering  Davie house, about midnight. Frank said that , well, those guys, wrapped up in black, but indeed hidden in black , looked like Arabs to him. But no, no Arabs…and then, what would three Arabs entirely dressed in black go to do at Davie’s? Jimmy had protested, those guys all in black…they seemed rather to be friars. John said that instead they remembered him by orthodox priests.

They remained all night waiting to see the three guys all dressed in black come out of Davie ’s house_____and they could be both men and wonen______While they waited , they also hoped that maybe they could have seen Davie  go out too, together with them. Oh, then they would have followed them and, who knows what they would have discovered. And at this point they launched themselves, at full blast,  in hypotheses, which were even a little fanciful. Davie  in the company of those three, who were rather  covered, indeed holed up in black than dressed in black, would have gone right to a cemetery to uncover graves, to unearth corpses….or perhaps they instead would have gone to  very particular nightclub. Frank claimed to have heard that there were very exclusive clubs reserved for rich Arabs, where the Arabs they could also invite friends who weren’t Arabs.  Jimmy on the other side, since he didn’t think those three all in black were Arabs, but rather friars, thought that Davy would have gone with them in some convent , or in some church, who knows for what ceremony, perhaps for a Black Mass. He had heard of Black Masses which took place at night sometimes in churches, but above all in the undergrounds of the churches. It had been talked of black messes with sacrifices not only of animals, mostly cats, which were slaughtered and gutted, and pigeons, whose wings were cut off, their beak cut off , and  then their head too. They had heard that in those black masses even babies, children and women were sacrificed.

They waited all night, but when it dawned they hadn’t seen anyone go out of Davie’s house. They were disconcerted : they had not really expected this eventuality

When, waiting during the night, they had launched into amazing hypotheses  about Davies going out with his guests, and where he would go with them, they also had imagined that the three guys all in black when they had come in Davie’s house, could come out dressed differently, wearing clothes that wouldn’t cover them, so that they could understand if they were men or women, if they were Arabs , or Europeans, or Asians or more…..

They decided they had to keep an eye on Davie’s house even during the day: sooner or later someone would come out of it, where they didn’t even see anyone enter. More and more disconcerted, since they knew the habits of Davy , who went every morning to have breakfast in the nearest bar, who went to the newsstand, to the breath oven…and he, sometimes, went out even for a walk. Besides they knew that his house has no back exits , from which at least Davie, but also his guests all in black might have gone out. Then they began to suspect that his house could have secret exits, however….and more they thought about it, more they were convinced.

It must be said that the belief that his house had secret exits was very much in accord with the suspicions they had about Davie, and also with the rather sinister__ yeah, we can say black____impression which those three guys all holed up in black, who they had seen entering the house at midnight, had made them. But sure, that old house, built more than a century earlier,  had  have an underground , which would probably be accessed by hatches and in that underground_____which in wartime had been a refuge to escape bombing, to escape the roundups, to hide_____there had have been tunnels through which one could come out…..Ah, but who knows where the exit of those tunnels could be…..they (it) could be near, there in Ponzi,

as could  they be miles and miles away. However to some of those who had decided to spy Davie, to find out what he was engaged in, the secret exit accessible through the underground tunnel reminded what Carl V. had told, that he had seen Davy, at evening, dig into that ground….. Carl V.’s tale about Davie who was digging….it all had started with that (his) tale.

And how could not come in their mind that the evening when Carl V. had seen him digging in that desolate ground Davie was arranging the secret exit to which the underground tunnel led? As there was a tunnel leading to a secret exit in the underground of his old house they did not doubt it. Then they decided to inspect the abandoned land inch by inch, looking for openings. In a team of eight men it took them two days to  scrupulously search that land  where weeds, stones, brambles, and even garbage abounded, but they didn’t find any opening-

Even more strange was that they didn’t see excavations or loose earth , as they had expected to find, since Carl V. had seen Davy dig.

But what really shocked them was the disappearance of Davy. Since the night when they, stationed to watch him, had seen the three indecipherable guys all holed up in black enter his house no one knew anything about him. There were those who said that he had been kidnapped, even if it was not known for what purpose……perhaps to ask for a ransom? But to whom could the kidnappers ask for a ransom? Davie didn’t have a family and, to what was known, he had no relatives either.

Those who had decided to follow him, to spy on him, thought that if he had disappeared like this, without leaving a trace, then he had have involved in something big.

It all was started with Carl V. who had told about Davie, who had seen him dig in that ground….then there had been the discovery of the bones in that same ground, which had strengthened their suspicions about Davy. None of them had ever thought, not even for only a moment, that Carl V. could have been wrong, that he could have mistaken another person for Davie.   So no one would have expected, would have imagined what Carl V. confessed before he died.

A few years had passed since Davie’s disappearance. No one had heard anymore anything about him, it was not known if he was alive or dead, when the epidemic caused by a Chinese virus, which would have made so many victims, also reached Ponzi. Carl V. too was a victim of the terrible Chinese virus. He, feeling to be going to die, confessed in a written document that he had lied: he had never seen Davy digging in that land. And not only that, even those pieces of human skeleton bones….he had brought them there, in that ground, just with the purpose that when they were found Davy would be suspected. Carl V.  wrote that he did all this since he hated Davie, but he didn’t reveal why he hated him.